Faith

Today I want to talk about faith.  Did you know you have faith?  "Well, wait a minute," I can hear you say, "I'm not even a Christian.  I don't believe in that faith stuff."  My friend I beg to differ with you.  You do have faith.  What you have faith in is a totally different question.  While I was working out at the gym today, my trainer showed me a video of the guy who recently jumped out of that balloon from the edge of space.  Did you know he had faith?  In what?  Gravity.  He believed that he would return to earth when he jumped out of that capsule.  If he hadn't believed it, he would never have jumped out.

See we operate in faith all the time.  When you get out of bed, you have faith that you will be able to stay on the floor (gravity again).  You have faith that you are breathing air.  You have faith that the round ball in the sky providing light is the sun.  We have faith in all kinds of things.  Yes some of us have faith in God and that's a very good thing.  According to the bible, the opposite of faith is fear.

Fear is faith that something bad is going to happen.  If you have fear that you are going to die in a car accident, you are really saying that you have faith that this will come to pass in your life.  That's not a good thing.  Now I know some people will say that they had faith in God for this to happen or that and it didn't.  Why didn't your faith work?  I can't say for sure.  There are a lot of reasons that you may not have received what you wanted.  But let's look at the other side, there are many times when we fear something will happen and it doesn't.

I am amazed sometimes at how much fear and faith we see everyday.  Some fear is stronger than others but some faith is stronger than others as well.  I want you to know that fear and faith are not equal even though they are opposites.  Faith in God will always beat fear.  So let me ask you what you are afraid of today?  In the last couple of weeks I have been afraid of a certain thing.  But here's what I learned, when I started trusting God and putting my faith in him, that fear had to shrink away.  So let me ask you this?  Where is your faith?

Is it in something bad or something good?  The answer is something you have to decide but know this - you will operate in faith in many things today.  You only get to chose what you have faith in.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

What to Do When the Cross Gets Heavy

Today this keeps running around in my head.  Now earlier this week it was for me but I sense it's for someone else today.  I posted this on the Minion Facebook page and on my personal Facebook page at different times this week.  It's the lyrics to a song called "Through the Fire" and it's performed by a group called The Crabb Family.

The lyrics that keep impacting me are these - "He never promised that the cross would not get heavy or the hill would not get hard to climb.  He never offered our victory without our fighting but He said help would always come in time.  Just remember when your standing in the Valley of Decision and the adversary says give in, just hold on.  My God will show up and He will take you through the fire again."  Those words are so true and they have impacted me greatly several times in my life.  This past week I went through a bit of a fire of my own making.  I'm thankful for friends and a wonderful woman who helped me see it for what it was.  I also gave myself permission to not be perfect this week.  Thank God for His grace.

Now I want you to think about something for a minute.  Put yourself in a room that is on fire.  You are standing in the middle of the room and everywhere you turn there is fire.  You can't see windows through the smoke and the flames.  What are you thinking about at this moment.  Chances are you see and think nothing but smoke and flames.  You're in a bad spot and there doesn't seem any way out of it.  What do you do?  There is no way to put out the flames so you will either go through or get burned.

Obviously this exact situation doesn't happen to many of us.  But what about when you are up against a school project that's due tomorrow?  Or maybe you are in a relationship that doesn't work right.  Maybe your financial picture is all messed up and you don't see any way out.  The list of possible bad situations could go on and on but I hope you see my point.  Regardless of what you are facing, I want you to know that God never promised you wouldn't face trouble.  The only way that happens is after you go to Heaven.  Before that event, you will see trials and tests.

What I want you to understand is that there isn't a situation that can possibly go on in your life that God can't handle.  Now here's where I get in the most trouble.  I have a tendency to meditate the problem for hours.  The thought of meditating God's promise over the situation can escape me at times.  Have you ever been like that?  I have been in situations recently that weren't near as big as I thought they were but because I focused solely on the problem it grew out of proportion.  On top of that, I never trusted God with the issue.

But when I finally woke up and took the issue I faced to God, He was right there waiting for me.  Guess what I didn't have to move at all to get to Him.  All I had to do was turn around and He was right there.  The Bible says He will never leave you nor forsake you.

So if you are going through tough times stop and trust God.  He never said life would be easy but He did say He would bring you through all the trials if you trust Him.

That's Another Opinion of the Minion